Part of the bizarre twist came when Jaymes Hall, a 41-year-old Philadelphia Flyers fan from Lancaster, Pa., tried to ask a question during Gary Bettman's press conference, and Bettman brushed it off before talking to Hall one-on-one following his session with the media.

A much bigger reason that the hockey world's collective head is spinning is what continues to happen inside and outside the negotiating room.

Inside, the union made its proposal, finally addressing a major flashpoint by tying the players' share of hockey-related revenue to percentages, rather than actual dollars (although the NHLPA proposal did call for a minimum cap in real dollars — $67.25 million, to be exact). And while the NHL was discussing the NHLPA's CBA plan, details of what the union had offered appeared on the Internet. Not that it mattered, because the league was busy shooting down that proposal.

"They appreciated it, but reiterated that they can't move," NHLPA executive director Donald Fehr said. "(It was) 'thanks, but you have to agree to what we say.' ... I will tell you the single question players ask me, and that's, 'Where is their reciprocity in the bargaining process on the other side?' And it's pretty hard to find."

Fehr is right about that, as the NHL seems to expect that players not only will take a lower share of revenues, but also will agree to strict contracting rules. The league's reciprocity is about as hard to find as a hockey player referring to "reciprocity in the bargaining process."

Call it a touch of poetic license, but the point is that Fehr is getting his message across.

Meanwhile, Bettman tries to do the exact same thing.

"We made what was our best offer, particularly on the economics, in order to save an 82-game season," Bettman said. "That offer was summarily rejected. We haven't taken it off the table yet, although I have a number of owners who suggest that I should have, and that I still should."

From the sound of that, you would think that an 82-game NHL season was still in play. It most certainly is not, and has not been for nearly a month. And, minutes after Bettman finished talking, Canadian media outlet TSN reported that the NHL is expected to cancel the All-Star Game and associated festivities on Friday.

But, hey, Bettman is entitled to spin the league's position as he sees fit. In fact, that's his job, just as it is Fehr's job to put the best face on what the NHLPA proposes.

Where things really get ridiculous is when they start talking about each other. Since the NHLPA was the side presenting an offer on Wednesday, it was Bettman's turn to play bad cop to Fehr's good cop.

"Today isn't the first time the union has come out of a session and talked about how wonderful their offer is, or how close we were, when in fact the reality was, they were misleading you," Bettman said. "I think everyone needs to take a step back, and I think all of the PR spinning is not going to get this done. ... Don can say whatever he wants, I'm not going to negotiate publicly."

Taking negotiations out of the public eye is a noble idea, and probably the best way to get a deal done. The NHL and NHLPA tried it at the beginning of the month, when negotiations were held at an undisclosed location, at least until the location was disclosed and turned out to be the offices of Proskauer Rose, Bettman's old law firm and the NHL's legal counsel.

Shortly after everyone found out where the negotiations were, everything fell apart.

So, on Tuesday, after Bettman talked about how he does not want to negotiate publicly, he was asked if there would be a benefit to returning to meeting in secret.

"You know our practice in this is only to respond," Bettman said. "We're not calling [the media] in the dead of night, we're not chastising you for things that you write and commentary you have. I would think that anything we would do that would keep this more low-key than what's going on would be better, because the spinning doesn't help. It just confuses lots of people."

It sure does. It is particularly confusing when Bettman says that the NHL is not chastising the media, two days after an interview with the Winnipeg Free Press in which the commissioner said of a Philadelphia Daily News story on Flyers owner Ed Snider possibly softening his hard-line labor stance, "It was a fabrication."

Especially as a lawyer, Bettman should be well aware of the difference between fabrication and a report being "erroneous," the word Snider used to shoot down the Daily News story. If that's not chastising, and not PR spinning, what is?

There is an easy way to avoid these self-contradictions, and it happens to be the same as the best way to get negotiations back on track: go silent. At this point, nobody wants to hear from the NHL or the NHLPA again until they are standing together to announce that they have a deal.

Talk might be cheap, but with the NHL losing $18 million to $20 million a day during the lockout, according to Bettman, it's still too costly, and it only gets worse each time Bettman or Fehr opens his mouth.